A train to board
by public static void
Summary: They were nowhere, but they had a destination to reach.


For the Fifth Round of the Character Admiration Tournament at **The Golden Snitch**. Prompt: Hermione Granger (Light) VS Tom Riddle Jr (Dark); task: Your character goes on an adventure with their greatest enemy.

So, this is written for **Team Dark** and **Durmstrang's House: Pirin!  
**

* * *

Being there was an oddity by itself. The world around him didn't exist. His past didn't exist. He didn't exist. If he could believe it, Tom was one with the universe —nothing more than a special speck of dust in the vast cosmos, spinning and twirling amongst the endless infinity.

Then, he opened his eyes and he marvelled at the scenery (if this place was nowhere, then what he saw was a fickle thought of his mind). The floor was solid, he realised, stomping his foot. It was grass, though completely light and made up of a mist. Magic, he knew instantly and almost cried.

All his life he had wasted his mind, his intelligence, in seeking immortality so he could be able to feel magic in its entirety. This place was full of it. It made Tom wonder if dying was this magnificent feeling of incorporeity, of being nothing and being the greatest, the only thing that mattered.

Maybe that was what magic was trying to tell him; how he was all that mattered in that moment of time —if time even existed. If so, wasn't it ironic that he pursued this feeling of fulfilment all his life only to find it in the death he tried so hard to avoid?

He kneeled on the ghostly grass, bringing his hands down to caress it (maybe the grass caressed his hands instead). His body rippled like clear water.

"Who are you?" came the voice then. Tom knew it. Knew him.

"Harry," he thought and magic carried the tendril of silver through the open space between him and the young man, giving it voice as if Tom himself had spoken it.

"Riddle?"

Silence overcame them for long instants that perhaps accounted for a single second or a full millennium. Existence in this place was eccentric, he believed.

"We died," Harry said, not scared or confused. It was a statement that made Tom notice one thing: he wasn't scared either. "And we are here now."

At some other time (his Hogwarts years, Tom thought, with Walburga and Orion and even Ramses Lestrange) Tom would have pointed out the stupidity of his comment. Right now, he didn't because the certainty of their situation was unknown. They could be there, but it could have been yesterday or the next week instead of now.

"The real question is why are we here," Tom said, surprising himself. It wasn't often that he shared his thoughts, his questions, with anyone else. There was no need; he was the greatest dark lord, the one with the answers that others came seeking.

He saw Harry look around, at his feet and then at the sides.

"You're sitting on grass," he told Tom. He saw Harry was standing on a smooth surface, as white as the grass beneath him.

"I'm in a cemetery," he replied as if it were the most obvious thing. "Where are you?"

He looked around again. Tom couldn't help noticing the strange feeling on his chest when Harry's face reflected nothing more than calm and curiosity.

He thought about it. Every other time they had met, a sense of urgency had dominated the atmosphere. He smirked; wanting to kill the boy had marked the relationship from the start.

"What?" Harry asked.

His subsequent moment of honesty marked that relationship even more.

"I am sorry," Tom said, surprising even himself.

"I don't believe you," Harry said simply. There was no hate in his eyes or any emotion in his voice.

Tom nodded. He didn't need Harry to believe his words, for as soon as he spoke them the burning in his chest subsided. He felt free.

"I see you found each other," a new voice said.

"Professor Dumbledore!" Harry exclaimed, excited and shocked.

Tom snorted. Of course, Dumbledore would manage to break even this charm of solitude.

"My boys," he said, opening his arms as if to embrace them. Riddle was glad to see Harry hesitating. For his part, he didn't move. "You are hesitant, I see. I don't blame you. You have lived more than others, Harry. And you, Tom. Even when you were a boy of eleven I knew you would be great."

"You knew I would be a threat to you, you mean," Tom spat, smirking. The white grass beneath him withered, crumbling into dust as he stood up. "You made sure to never guide me. You looked down at me, Professor. You judged me and made sure I would find closed doors wherever I went."

Harry looked confused but he was ready to defend Dumbledore in a heartbeat. Dumbledore didn't let him.

"Yet, you were ambitious enough to pave your own path, my boy."

"I am not your boy. I am Lord Voldemort and you would do well to remember that."

"Oh, but you are just Tom again, aren't you?" Dumbledore asked, fixating his eyes on Tom's. "Tell me, Tom: haven't you regretted your actions yet? I think you have. If you hadn't, you wouldn't be here as you stand. In this place between the worlds, you would be nothing more than a wretched piece of your soul without a place."

Tom looked away. He felt ashamed. He was supposed to be the greatest Dark Lord and here he was, once again humiliated by Dumbledore. But the old man was right.

Dumbledore chuckled.

"It's nothing to be ashamed of, Tom."

"Yeah," Harry said, visibly uncomfortable. Tom understood his awkwardness and he was angry by that; how dare Harry Potter to have sympathy for him! "It's alright, Tom. I think I understand now."

Tom doubted he did but couldn't say anything more. A storm was coming, but only behind him.

"A train is coming," Harry muttered.

"King's Cross? You are at King's Cross?" Tom asked, wondering what it meant.

"It was the place that brought me here. The train brought me to a place where I belonged," Harry said, shrugging.

"You have a choice to make," Dumbledore said, adopting a posture that left no doubt he was enjoying the situation. The old man looked at Harry. "You can move on, or you can go back?"

"Back to my friends?" the boy said and Tom snorted. Of course the young, brave fool would choose that, but where did that leave Tom.

"You only have to choose which train to board, my dear boy."

Harry looked at a train and sighed sadly.

Tom sought his own options, but in the cemetery, the only thing he saw was an open tomb. He froze. He didn't want to die. He was afraid.

"What will Riddle do, Headmaster?" Harry asked, looking at him with half a smirk as if expecting Dumbledore to say he was lost and nothing could save him.

When Dumbledore turned his eyes to him, Tom wished he'd say that.

"He has his own choice," was all he said before vanishing the same as he came. "I trust the both of you."

"I don't understand," Harry said. "I should be dead, not you. You should only be the soul within me."

Tom raised an eyebrow. "You were an Horcrux? That's why you sacrificed yourself. It wasn't out of bravery if you knew you wouldn't die."

Harry's cheeks burned and his eyes sparked with anger. "What do you know about bravery? You were the one scared of dying."

Tom saw red. "And aren't you scared, Harry?" he said, trying to keep his voice charming enough, the same he had done with fool Helena Ravenclaw and with his fool teachers. "You are the one afraid of what awaits. Why going back to your friends, when you can conquer death?"

Potter frowned and he smirked. Maybe he was considering his offer, and Tom refused to acknowledge the beating of his heart against his chest, trying to quell the excitement of thinking about what the two of them could achieve.

"Besides, there is nothing left for you, Harry. Think of it. Your friends didn't stop you from coming. They believed it when you said there was no other choice. Even you know it isn't truth. There are always choices to make."

"Power and weakness," Harry whispered, opening his eyes wide. Tom could see Harry finally understood. "Your weakness will always be my power, Tom."

"Love?" Tom spat. "Love has always been my own power, Harry. My strength. You might love your friends," Tom said, sneering and walking towards Harry. With each step he gave, King's Cross platform's floor was overwhelmed by grass and weeds, "but I love magic, and there is nothing more pure than magic."

"That isn't what you meant before," Harry shook his head. "When I met you seven years ago, you didn't mean this."

"I admit Horcruxes can mess with one's mind," Tom retorted nonchalantly. In truth, a single Horcrux could have been a good idea; when he created more... That was the problem. "But aren't you glad I'm here?"

Harry snorted and looked away. "I should have thought this wasn't the real Voldemort. You're nothing more than a piece of my own mind."

Tom frowned. Harry couldn't be right; for all the sensation of incorporeity this place (this nowhere) gave him, he was sure he was real. He felt real; his eyes could see, his ears could hear. His skin shivered at the touch of magic. There was nothing more real than this feeling.

"The trains are leaving," Harry whispered sadly. It occurred to Tom that Harry didn't really want to go back to his friends, to the destruction.

"You waited for this, Harry," Tom said, speaking charmingly again. He knew his manipulations couldn't work with Harry. He was too stubborn, too set on his morality. He still had to try. "You could board a train that goes back to a time when your parents were still alive. You could live free of the prophecy."

"And leave you here to do as you please? No. Where I go, you go with me."

Tom couldn't believe Harry was speaking seriously. He couldn't believe his plan worked.

"Why would I?" he said, pacing around Potter. The grass and weeds kept growing with his steps, the platform's white, dead floor turning into life. "I like being here."

"You like being dead?" Harry asked, mocking. "Don't try to play with me. You are curious about where will the train take me."

Tom simply smirked, waiting for anything else Harry had to say. When he said nothing, Tom sighed.

"It's boring now," he admitted. "To kill you... I forgot what I meant to do so I could kill you. My patience. My achievements. Everything was forgotten so I could kill a baby that killed me instead."

"You really regret it," Harry said. Tom refused to meet his eyes, focusing on the clock hanging in Harry's King's Cross' walls. Ten fifty-eight. The Hogwarts Express would depart at eleven.

"I want to be great."

"And Voldemort wasn't," Harry nodded, looking at the clock too. "But Tom Riddle can be."

Ten fifty-nine.

"Board the train with me," Harry offered and what surprised Tom was the honesty in his voice. This wasn't the result of Tom's manipulation. This was Harry wanting to help him. Who was stupid enough to help his enemy?

"Where would we go?" It seemed he was stupid enough to accept.

Harry grinned and the mist, the magic, swirled around him. "Wherever the trains take us."


End file.
